By LOU HARRY You don’t need to go to an amusement park to have the feeling of riding a roller coaster. In Stratford, Ontario, you can acquire something akin to whiplash at a festival where you can see a brutal, biker-based Macbeth, an austere, and a spirit-lifting Annie in the same weekend with a garden…
By LOU HARRY, Special to Theatrecriticism.com Yes, “Henry IV” is the complete title. Sans the “part 1” and “part 2” that traditionally complete the title of William Shakespeare’s historical take, this adaptation fuses the two plays into a three-act, approximately four-hour one-nighter. At Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn, the result is a crisp,…
By LOU HARRY Prior to a performance, most theaters share a short list of expected behaviors. Turn off those cell phones. Unwrap those candies. Note the exits. However, for Hamlet, staged at Santa Fe’s Center for Contemporary Arts, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the list is significantly different. The first rule for Exodus Ensemble’s immersive,…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) In a town famous for launching its most famous celebration on Twelfth Night, one might think the connection to the self-named Shakespearean comedy would be a given. But, alas, the title selected by the Bard for this memorable work has absolutely nothing to do with the promise…
By ROY BERKO Shakespeare, in his comedies, writes of trickery, false accusations, restoration of harmony and romance. He uses lots of double entendre and encourages fun and farce as well as broad performances. Charles Fee, the Producing Artistic Director of Great Lakes Theatre (GLT), loves nothing more than staging expansive melodrama, farce and slapstick. As…
By AARON KRAUSE NEW YORK, N.Y. — Dorothy Michaels is unstoppable. We learned that much in the Tony Award-nominated Broadway musical adaptation of Tootsie. It is based on the popular Academy Award-nominated 1982 movie with the same title. So it comes as no surprise that, even though the musical will close on Jan. 5 after 293 performances…
By ALAN SMASON It’s been more than 400 years since the bulk of the Bard of Stratford-on Avon’s works were written in what is referred by today’s scholars as early modern English. Some 200 years before Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in a prose described as Middle English, peppered with French idioms. The differences between what…
By AARON KRAUSE SPRING GREEN, Wisconsin — It’s tucked away amid 110 acres of hilly woods and meadows near this town of about 1,600 in southwest Wisconsin. Indeed, you could easily miss it if you’re not on the lookout for the sign. It points a patron in the direction of the renowned destination. But there’s no…
